Shell Oil Corp. released its remedial action plan to clean Carson's Carousel tract neighborhood, which is badly contaminated with oil from a former tank farm at the site. The plan has been in the works since 2008, when the dumped oil was rediscovered. Shell and the community have been at loggerheads over fixing the contamination, with Shell underplaying the project's harms and residents overplaying them. Protest signs dot most homes in the neighborhood.
Monday, March 24, 2014, Carson, CA. (Steve McCrank / Staff Photographer)

Shell Oil Corp. released its remedial action plan to clean Carson's Carousel tract neighborhood, which is badly contaminated with oil from a former tank farm at the site. Protest signs dot most homes in the neighborhood. Monday, March 24, 2014, Carson, CA. (Steve McCrank / Staff Photographer)

City officials and a law firm representing homeowners in the Carousel housing tract in Carson on Monday blasted Shell Oil Co.’s proposed plan to clean up petroleum-contaminated soil in the neighborhood.Shell has proposed cleaning the top three feet of soil across most of the 50-acre site over a two-year period, ignoring a directive from the county’s oversight agency — in its Regional Action Plan released March 10 — to clean the top 10 feet.“It’s a joke,” said Tom Girardi, whose firm is suing Shell on behalf of hundreds of Carousel tract residents and the city. “We know positively without a doubt that all the benzene and oil products go down to 28 feet. I think they already took three feet off when they developed the property.

"They’re disgusting. Despicable. There will be no settlement. We want a jury to look at this.”Shell’s rationale is that it will install a soil-vapor extraction system to remediate soil at depths beneath three feet in the Wilmington-adjacent community near the intersection of Lomita and Avalon boulevards.“That system will hopefully remove enough contaminants to get down to the cleanup goals that were established,” said Doug Weimer, a senior principal program manager for Shell. “If someone digs below three feet, they’d have to get a city permit and Shell would manage that to make sure” no contaminants are there.

Weimer said the action is appropriate because the city already has an ordinance that requires residents to get a city permit before digging in their yards below three feet. This way, the soil would be closely monitored, along with hazardous vapors emanating from the area and chemicals spreading deeper into groundwater reserves.But Carson Councilman Al Robles, who led an initiative last week to ban oil and gas drilling in the city for the next 45 days, called the cleanup plan “totally wrong.”“They’re saying you need a city permit to dig below three feet but that’s not true at all,” Robles said. “It’s just another way for them to stall and further delay.”

Robles said that concerns in the Carousel tract — which have festered since the contamination was first uncovered in 2008 — will be the first order of business for the Carson Toxics Threat Strike Team created by the City Council on March 18. The council has already declared an “environmental emergency” in the neighborhood, and has joined residents who are suing Shell, alleging various medical ailments such as cancer and heart problems among residents and their pets.Mayor Jim Dear and other City Council members have repeatedly said that they believe Shell should pay residents for their homes, then raze the property and replace all the contaminated soil. But Shell officials argue that they don’t need to do all that to keep residents and important groundwater supplies safe.

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Shell spokesman Alan Caldwell said 100 to 110 of the 285 homes in the Carousel tract “won’t need anything done,” because they were built on top of portions of the property that weren’t contaminated.“I’m not a real estate specialist, but I do know that there have been no issues in selling or purchasing homes,” Caldwell said. “No one’s home has sold under market value and people are still buying homes in Carousel” despite concerns about contamination.The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered the cleanup in 2008 when the contamination was discovered during routine testing. The petroleum deposits were left from a former oil storage tank farm operated at the site by Shell from the 1920s to the 1960s. When the facility was demolished, the tanks were knocked down and left in the ground, along with an unknown amount of waste oil. The site was covered in a layer of clean soil, and then the homes were built.

Concerns about groundwater contamination and human health threats from known cancer-causing chemicals emanating into homes through soil vapors have since been extensively studied. The water quality control board announced late last year that it was at odds with Shell officials about how thoroughly the company needs to clean the soil. The two agencies remain at odds, and Shell has petitioned the State Water Resources Control Board for a second opinion.The water quality control board said Shell should clean the area to the level it was before contamination, or to the “most stringent level that is economically and technologically feasible.”

But Shell officials continue to argue that those measures aren’t necessary, and that the health and safety of residents is not at risk. The issues of contention are how much people are being exposed to certain levels of chemicals, such as benzene, methane and other petroleum-related products.“We absolutely care about that community and the neighborhood, and we are working to get this right,” Caldwell said. “There’s been a mischaracterization that the site is completely destroyed. We’re trying to focus on where there’s an issue. We’re working as hard as we can but we’re also limited. We can’t just go excavate someone’s house. We have to get approval from the water board.”

Water board officials declined to comment publicly on the issue.Councilwoman Lula Davis-Holmes said she won’t be satisfied until more is done.“Whatever it takes to get these residents whole,” Davis-Holmes said. “They should remediate that soil to 100 percent satisfaction. We’ve got a community that’s hurting and the regional water board is just dragging their feet.”

A public comment period on the Remedial Action Plan — available for review at www.waterboards.ca.gov/losangeles/Kast/index.shtml — will continue through the summer. The initial study for the plan’s environmental impact review has been released, and public comment will be accepted on it through April 18.